


A Mother Thing

by Ustuura



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 10:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1601567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ustuura/pseuds/Ustuura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Potter-Weasley gang's reactions, in the hospital after the first Potter kid is born. Harry's always had a bit of a father thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mother Thing

Ginny’s entire body was sticky with sweat. Strands of red hair, darkened with wet, suck to her face in salty tracks. She was exhausted and aching and she longed to sleep, but cradled in her arms among the tossed white sheets was a baby; her baby. He was tiny and red with a screwed up face and swollen eyelids, and she pulled him as close as she could through the buffer of his striped hospital blankets, and he sank into the fold of her newly soft stomach. 

Her eyes were heavy, and she tried not to close them, worried that the baby would get lost in all the swaddling and slip away, but then there was a hot, clammy form beside her, and Harry’s hair was in her face as the weight was lifted from her lap. He smelled like coffee and sweat and underneath it, Hogwarts soap and her own perfume. He squatted next to her, and kissed her gently over the baby’s head. She closed her eyes and he clumsily pressed his mouth to her cheek and forehead again, lips just barely open, and smoothed her hair back from her face. 

She looked up at him and he looked back, all wide green eyes and rumpled black head and thin scar against shining skin. She’d seen many and varying emotions on that face, but this, now- it’s such a mixture of love, surprise. She wondered that the brightness in his eyes hadn't yielded a tear. She lifted a tired arm and draped it around his shoulders, then pressed a kiss into his hair and leaned down to the baby’s level, by Harry’s ear. 

“You owe me big time for this one, Potter,” and she closed her eyes as they both laughed quietly into the tiny sleeping form. 

*

There were people in the room when she next opened her eyes. Ron and Hermione, but then, when weren’t they there? They talked in hushed tones, Ron in the chair beside her and his Hermione perched at the end of her bed. Harry was hovering over her brother, who was holding the freshly washed and wrapped bundle in his arms. 

“Wow... Harry!” Even Ron’s freckles looked suspended in wonder. “He’s just. It’s a baby.”

“You act like you’ve never seen one before, Ron.” 

“Yeah, but this one’s yours. Yours and my sister’s, Merlin!” he murmured. “He’ll be like a little Harry.” Hermione snorted and got up to stand beside Harry. They peered down as the baby opened his eyes. They were round and glassy still, unfocused as he blinked up at the looming faces. 

“He has Ginny’s eyes,” Hermione observed. It’s true. The eyes are brown, not green or blue, but the little hair he’s got already is dark, not red. “Merlin,” Ron whispers again. “Well done, mate. Congratulations, Harry.” Harry smiles brightly- in fact, he’s positively beaming. 

“Congratulations, Harry,” Hermione echoed, and squeezed Harry’s hand where it rested on Ron’s shoulder, but then the baby began to make little, crackly wailing noises, and then he is crying in earnest. It’s the fragile sound of newborn whimpers, without tears. It was the sound that every parent listens for, which had brought both herself and Harry to relieved cries a few hours ago. 

Ron stood up. “What’s the matter then, little guy? Hungry, are you?” He bounced the baby against his chest. 

“You’ll make a good dad, Ron,” said Ginny, and everyone turned to look at her. She pushed herself up in bed, as Ron handed placed the baby in her lap. 

“Not as good a mum as you’re going to be. It runs in the family, that. D’you have a charm on him to wake you up when he starts to cry?” 

“It comes naturally with motherhood, actually.” She leaned across the baby again to take the hug that her brother offered, their red hair mingling on her pillow. 

“Hmm, but you smell like a pair of Dad’s muggle trekking boots,” Ron said, blithely, wrinkling his nose. She swatted at his head. 

“I’d like to see you try giving childbirth and see how you smell, Ronald,” she responded, swatting him away. The baby was still crying, and her motherly instincts wouldn’t let her neglect him any longer. He flailed his tiny fists in slow motion and turned his head blindly into her chest until she pulled away her nightgown, leading Harry to ask if Ron wanted to accompany him out to tell the others. Ginny cringed and wondered how many people had shown up. 

As they slid through the door of the cramped St. Mungo’s maternity ward, Ron ducked to Hermione’s ear, brushing away her frizzing brown hair and whispering “Want one?” not so subtly. Hermione, laughing shortly, swiped him away and moved to sit on Ginny’s bed again. 

*  
Hermione watched her as she nursed the baby. He made wet little sucking noises at her breast, and Ginny secretly felt quite pleased with herself and her baby for figuring out how it was done so quickly. 

“He really is wonderful,” said Hermione, and she nodded in silent agreement. 

“Harry’s beside himself. You should have heard him when he first flooed.” 

“He’s pleased that it’s a boy,” Ginny said. “He would have been fine with either. But the first… James Sirius, did you hear?” 

“Harry has a bit of a father thing,” Hermione said, and Ginny laughed loudly. 

“Isn’t that the truth? He’ll do well though. He’s always wanted it.” Hermione voiced her agreement, and Ginny was reminded of the girls’ dormitory at Hogwarts. Many an hour had been spent there, sitting on Hermione’s bed or her own discussing Harry Potter. It was easy to forget all the years in between just now, minus the baby gnawing at her nipple.  
She looked at Hermione. They were both still so young. Hermione had finished her last year at Hogwarts, and now worked at the ministry in law enforcement. She and Ron had been married the year before, after Ginny and Harry.

“Do you? Want one?” she nodded to the baby, clarifying. Hermione frowned, looking at the little thing in her arms.

“I…Ron does, I just- I’ve never been very good with children. I didn’t have any siblings, not like you two.” 

“I’m sure you’d make a fine mum. And trust me, with the family you’ve joined, you won’t lack any help if you need it,” Ginny answered with a meaningful look toward the door. “Victoire’s offered me babysitting for life, but I told her she has to be big enough to lift the baby before I let her watch him.”

“Hmm,” 

“There you are, Jamie. Jamie? Does that sound daft?” she inquired, as the baby finally broke away from his meal, “Anyway. Hello, there. I’ve hardly gotten to look at you all day.” She spoke softly into the baby’s blanket. He dribbled milk onto his blue newborn onesie with the appliqué of hippogriffs chasing their tails. “Want to hold him?” 

“Oh,” Hermione squeaked. That was a habit of hers when she was nervous, squeaking. “Er, alright.” So Ginny transferred the bundle over to her sister-in-law, though he had already dropped into sleep, and rearranged her clothing unselfconsciously.

*

James Sirius Potter was handed between no less, and probably more, than twenty or so Weasley’s and their extended family. Harry hovered over everybody who held his son until Charlie came bounding in out of nowhere and bought drinks for everybody but Ginny, and Harry was clapped on the back by all the Weasley brothers and Mr. Weasley, a proud grandfather again. Molly hugged him and cried, patted his cheek and cried some more. For Ginny, she had pride-filled eyes, and also heaps of the parenting advice Ginny had been relying on and dreading in equal measures. 

The other Weasley grandchildren were allowed in after lunch to meet their first Potter cousin, and to her surprise, Fleur said all the right things to keep people from pestering Ginny too much, so she was able to eschew the worst of Mrs. Weasley’s advice.

By supper time, Luna and Neville had both dropped by with congratulations, and from each of them, a gift. Neville brought a glowing cactus of some sort that smelled faintly of vanilla, for the nursery, he said. From Luna they had a picture book of fantastic beasts, and Ginny’s heart warmed to discover that all the illustrations were by hand-done by Luna.

At six, Ginny pulled Teddy Lupin into her bed and let him hold James cradled in his lap, and then assured him that he would always have a room at his godfather’s house in Godric’s Hollow no matter how many Potter sprog it filled with. Teddy’s hair stayed black and unruly for some time that year. 

When at last the medi-witches had pronounced Ginny and the baby free to go, Ron offered to drive them home, and Hermione said that perhaps she’d better do it. The pair of them had been with them at St. Mungo’s all day. 

As they stood in the gate leading up the house, the house looked back at them and them and thought that perhaps it was dreaming. Potters had lived in these parts for generations and generations, and still…They couldn't be the same couple, though. The other Potter’s had a big, black dog, sometimes. But the house could distinctly remember another time, not so long ago, comparatively, when a rumple-headed, bespectacled Potter had fussed around a red-headed girl as she held a suspicious new bundle topped with a tuft of dark hair.


End file.
